MIRACLE CITY

Evening Star, Issue 24282, 25 August 1942, Page 4

MIRACLE CITY

MIGHTY STALINGRAD SOVIET RUSSIA’S PRIDE Stalingrad is the main centre of Soviet resistance, because of its strategic value, but in this article from tho Melbourne 1 Herald,’ Mary L. Turnbull, an Australian woman who has visited the city, shows other reasons why the Soviet troops fight so hard for it.

Approaching by river-boat, one sees an impressive panorama of Stalingrad—a great industrial city, extending for 35 miles along the high west bank of the River Volga. Giant chimney-stacks and factory buildings reflect in tho waters of the grand river which, there, only 100 miles from the delta, is half a mile wide.

The Russian people are justly proud of Stalingrad, one of the miracle cities, which, in an incredibly short time, grew from a small town of miserable wooden houses and sandy, unmade roads, into an important industrial city with a.sphalt or cobble-stone streets and fine apartment houses for some 450,000 inhabitants.

Passengers from the Volga river-boats disembark at tho southern residential end of Stalingrad, where arc situated the hotels, the administrative buildings, the spacious city squares and gardens, and the Park of Culture and Rest. TANK ARSENAL PLANNED.

Stalingrad first came into tho world news when the now famous tractor works were built under the direction of American engineers. Technical men watched what seemed a miracle. A provincial trading centre developed an industry which, by 1936, was turning out 140 tractors a day—■ and ready to switch to tank production at the first sign of war. Stalingrad is very flat and dusty, for behind it lie plains" stretching westward to the River Don. The long, unprotected road to the tractor works showed promise of a fine avenue of shady trees. In all possible places around about the works were young trees, lawns of grass, and flower beds*_ The factory is a city in itself. Buildings connected with it face on to a fine square. Raised .on a high pedestal is a colossal statue of the man to whose foresight the tractor works owe thier existence. WELFARE OF WORKERS.

Wo walked for miles through the works, and saw tho manufacture from the moltenmetal stage to the painting of smart tractors carried along slowly and steadily by a revolving rack. We were shown the wall newspaper, where workers can air grievances or post the names of record breakers. We were introduced to woman stakhanovites; saw the casualty room, with doctor and nurse in attendance; the creche where mothers leave their very young babies and attend to theih at meal times, even during working houri. We inspected the kitchen factory, supplying the restaurant, which even then served 30,000 meals three times a day; the special tables for workers on diet, the rest room anil couches for those ordered rest after meals; and all the other conveniences which are a part of the modern factories of the U.S.S.R. GREAT FOOD PRODUCTION.

In the long twilight Stalingrad, presented a happy picture. The hotel dining room was gay with a dinner party of the railway management committee, as well as with young meu and girls who had come to dine and dance.

Outside in the garden square parents in light, simple clothing and low-heeled summer shoes, sat on the many seats and watched happy children playing on the grass and round a fountain, charming with stone frogs and tortoises perched on the rim of the catchment basin, and six lifesized child-figures dancing hand in hand round tho water jet. The following day wo passed across tho plains to tho north-west of Stalingrad, and saw wheatfieids stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. And at times on both sides of the railway line were vegetable gardens for many miles on end, with, every little- while, the clustered houses of a collective farm. It is for its strategic, industrial, and food-producing value that the Russians strive so hard to hold Stalingrad; and their great pride in it makes them fight harder.